IDEA SHOP In one corner, a team of students with their own startup company huddle around a 3D printer to work on a product prototype they plan to pitch to investors in a few weeks.
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t another workstation, a retiree works in the woodwork shop on a project she intends to sell at an upcoming farmer’s market. The door opens, and a father and son walk in wearing Cub Scout uniforms. They’ve got a Pinewood Derby car to build for the upcoming race. That’s the vision behind the Idea Shop, a facility that opened in early 2019 in downtown Starkville and was made possible by the USDA and an individual donor to Mississippi State University. The 2,000-square-foot space is about three-quarters “maker space” and one-quarter “retail incubator,” said Eric Hill, the director of the MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach, commonly called the MSU e-Center, which built and runs the Idea Shop.
“The charter of the Idea Shop is not entrepreneurially driven per se,” Hill said. “There’s no entrepreneurial reason somebody has to have to interact with the makerspace. We want it to be an inspirational place, the spirit and culture of ‘making.’” Hill said that people who want to sign up and use the maker space, which features a wood shop, 3D-printing facility and other tools for creating physical products, do not have to be students or faculty of the university. In fact, they don’t have to be part of any sort of business-incubation program. “It will have its own programming—a series of workshops on how to use this equipment,” he said of the Idea Shop. “The goal is to involve the community members and alumni in the area, get them from their garages to here.” Michael Lane, a recent graduate of Mississippi State with a
Photos by Megan Bean / Mississippi State University innovate.ms • 41
